


'Cause You've Got Me Waxing and Waning

by paperclipbitch



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Crushes, Everybody Lives, M/M, Slow Build, canon ships, endless cameos, soy lattes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 05:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17616782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: Soy Latte Vampire has never given them his name.  The only thing hehasgiven them is his opinion on how you make the perfect soy latte, and his numerous opinions on how they’re failing miserably at it.





	'Cause You've Got Me Waxing and Waning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [croissantkatie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/croissantkatie/gifts).



> [Title from _Edge of the Moon_ by Tori Amos] For **croissantkatie** , who requested a coffee shop AU for these boys, and I've never actually written a _nice_ fic about them despite them being one of my all-time OTPs, so, consider this the fluff we all deserve.
> 
> Also I can't believe that the longest thing I've successfully finished in about two years is this story/of course the longest thing I've successfully finished in about two years is this story.
> 
> This is canon-adjacent in that everyone is still supernatural and in roughly their correct friendship/relationship groups, but consider timelines and location extremely handwavy.

“Oh god, don’t look now, Soy Latte Vampire is here,” Alex hisses, voice nearly lost under the milk she’s steaming. 

This isn’t exactly a surprise, because Soy Latte Vampire comes in at exactly the same time on exactly the same days, three times a week, but somehow it always seems to catch them by surprise. Tom ducks by Alex to grab the soy milk from the fridge under the counter, while she pours out an immaculate flat white. Tom’s not bad at his job, but he’s not great with flat whites, and can’t get that perfect pattern on the top of it, so Alex tends to take over those.

“Soy latte, sir?” Allison, manning the till, asks. She actually knows most of their regulars by name, because this is that kind of place, but Soy Latte Vampire has never given them his name. The only thing he _has_ given them is his opinion on how you make the perfect soy latte, and his numerous opinions on how they’re failing miserably at it. 

Whatever Soy Latte Vampire says in reply – he’s weirdly softly-spoken – is lost as Tom steams the soy milk, keeping an eye on the thermometer attached to the jug, because if it goes even slightly above sixty degrees, Soy Latte Vampire will somehow know, and then he will bitch, quietly and ceaselessly, and then Allison might cry and Alex will stomp off to sulk and then Tom will be left alone to deal with the post-work rush, unless they can get Michaela to come in early. 

Alex passes Tom a pre-warmed latte cup, which he tips the espresso into, and then carefully, carefully, adds the soy milk. It’s pretty much impossible to do latte art with soy milk at this temperature, but that’s fine; Alex tried latte art on Soy Latte Vampire one time and he point-blank refused to touch his drink. It looks nice to Tom, but he’s not a weirdly specific vampire, so who knows.

He puts the latte on the bar, and watches as Soy Latte Vampire examines his drink, eyebrow raised, and then pulls it slowly toward himself as though it might explode. He turns toward the barely half-full café, and then says: “oh”, almost inaudibly. Tom leans and can see that the only table Soy Latte Vampire is willing to sit at – the one right in the corner, as far away from windows, the counter, and the toilets as possible – is currently occupied. 

“Not it,” Alex says quickly, the traitor, and Tom sighs, brushes coffee grounds off his apron, and goes to use what Alex and Annie gleefully refer to as his Puppy Dog Eyes, despite the fact that Tom’s not sure they’re allowed to say that, him being a werewolf and all.

There are two embarrassingly well-dressed vampires sitting at the table, leaning over ipads and sharing a pot of darjeeling, which Annie says is delicate and fragrant, and Tom thinks tastes like nothing, even when you add three spoons of sugar.

“Sorry,” Tom says awkwardly, because even though there’s a permanent truce in place in this coffee shop and he’s never had any bad behaviour from any of their vampire customers – ridiculous tantrums aside – there’s still some part of him that expects them to treat him like shit. “Um, would you mind moving tables? That guy wants to sit here and, er, he’s dead fussy?”

He jerks a thumb over his shoulder and tries to look hopeful. The taller of the two vampires glances behind Tom, and the sneer on his mouth drops off; he’s pretty pale anyway since he’s, you know, dead, but he somehow goes even paler.

“Of course,” he says quickly, he and his companion grabbing their ipads and teacups with a hasty clatter, moving over to the other side of the café like their lives depend on it. Tom hasn’t had that effect on anyone for a long time – not since the van, and his dad, and the time he had at least two sharpened stakes on his person at all times, and a necklace made of teeth – but he doesn’t think that it’s him. He looks over his shoulder, but Soy Latte Vampire is still standing next to the counter, prim and proper, the buttons of his shirt done all the way up to the top like it’s strangling him.

He inclines his head at Tom as he passes, the closest thing to thanks any of them have ever had, and sits down at the empty table, positioning his latte cup perfectly in the upper right hand corner, and carefully removing a small wooden box of dominos from his fancy messenger bag. Tom shrugs, because everyone in here has their quirks, and goes back to the counter, where Alex is making faces at him to hurry up and help her make a batch of iced mochas.

-

Annie set up this cafe a couple of years ago, and still lives upstairs, with a vampire, two werewolves, and whatever the baby of two werewolves turns out to be. The idea behind this place is that it’s a safe haven for vampires, werewolves, ghosts – and the rest – to congregate, have a coffee, have a chat, and not worry about trying to appear normal, like they do at most other times of their lives. They get the occasional human in here, but they’re usually accompanied by a member of the supernatural community; for some reason, most normal people prefer the Starbucks a couple of streets over. 

Tom’s worked here for eighteen months, after his dad died and he was left alone with a vigilante mission and no idea what he was supposed to be doing; George and Nina found him, let him kip on the sofa upstairs, and showed him that his world could contain any number of things that weren’t sleeping in a freezing cold van and murdering people. He likes it here, more than he expected to: his life was very lonely even when he was with his dad, because they never spent any time with anyone else, couldn’t possibly make friends. In the cafe, there’s always someone to talk to, to learn about.

Alex has only been a ghost for about six months, after she was murdered by the kind of vampires that aren’t their clientele, and she’s bad-tempered and very Scottish and very loud in a way no one Tom has ever known is, and she’s very different to Allison, who likes books and museums and is currently studying at university and works shifts around her lectures. They’re both Tom’s best friends, and he’s never had best friends before, never had a family like the one he’s built here, and it’s nice. Sometimes he misses his dad and the van and the simplicity of their lives then, but mostly he understands how that life had to end, and how he’s much happier now.

There are still bits of his life that haven’t exactly aligned yet, but that’s nothing new.

“You could literally ask out anyone who comes in here,” Alex says.

It’s a slow afternoon; Alex is sitting on the back counter next to the coffee machine, even though that technically contravenes the health and safety manual that Annie made them all memorise and then do random tests on, just in case, even though no one has ever come to check that they’re doing things properly here. Still, it’s just Tom and Alex until Adam comes in for the late afternoon shift, and Alex has already flung today’s paper’s sudoku aside in frustration.

“I don’t want to ask out literally anyone,” Tom responds quickly, because Alex tends to get bad ideas and then follow through on them, and this sounds like it could end in dares and a whole mess.

“I know, I know,” Alex scoffs, eyerolling, kicking her feet against the cupboards, “virginity is a flower, not for everyone, no plucking, blah blah blah.”

“You said that was lovely when I told you!” Tom protests.

“I was laughing at you, you nerd,” Alex says cheerfully. “I’m having a better sex life than you, and I’m actually literally dead.”

Tom doesn’t want to hear details of how ghosts make sex work, but apparently Annie and Mitchell are very happy, and Alex goes on lots of not-exactly-dates with some of the ghosts who come in here regularly and can’t drink anything but enjoy having chess tournaments and bickering, so he just has to cover his ears with his hands and try to ignore it when Michaela and Adam start asking nosy questions and Alex starts gleefully sharing details.

There’s a soft ahem, and Tom spins around from Alex’s laughing face to see that Soy Latte Vampire is here.

“It’s not three o’clock on Thursday afternoon,” Tom blurts, and Soy Latte Vampire raises an eyebrow. 

“No,” he allows, after a long moment, carefully straightening the cuffs of his white shirt. “It’s not.”

Tom waits, but when there’s no reply forthcoming, he tries: “do you… still want a soy latte?”

Soy Latte Vampire blinks a couple of times, and then says: “yes.” After another one of those weird pauses, like on live TV when the different feeds don’t match up, he adds: “…please.”

Tom puts it through the till while listening to Alex grabbing milk and a glass behind him. Soy Latte Vampire pays for his drink contactlessly, carefully not touching his card to the machine like most customers do, and walks to the other end of the bar to wait. Tom glances over to check, and at least his regular table is free.

Alex is laughing to herself while she steams the milk, eyes on the thermometer, though she’s being discreet about it, biting her lips together and flushing in a way that ghosts rarely do.

“What?” Tom asks, but she just shakes her head and flaps him away, so he lets her get on with not mucking up the soy latte, and instead turns back to where Soy Latte Vampire is standing still by the blank end of the counter that they put fulfilled on, staring fixedly at the little box of cup sleeves they keep there, and the little pot of wooden drink stirrers beside it.

Tom knows that he doesn’t have all his social cues lined up properly, because he didn’t learn them growing up, but Annie and Nina have been teaching him, and spending all that time with customers has also taught him some other stuff, and Soy Latte Vampire is definitely more than a bit weird.

Alex puts the latte carefully down in front of him, because they’ve allowed some of the foam to slop over the edges before and it was a whole drama, and then bows with a flourish and adds: “your coffee, m’lord”, because no matter how many times Annie says they have to be polite to their customers, they don’t always manage it. Soy Latte Vampire flinches so discreetly that Tom thinks he only catches it because of his extra good werewolf senses, and then says: “this is… adequate,” before taking his coffee away with him and sitting down at his normal table.

Alex has popped back to her seat on the back counter before Tom turns around, and he doesn’t know if he wants to tell her that that was mean, because it wasn’t, not really, or it wasn’t meant to be mean anyway, so he just sighs and goes to empty the dishwasher because there isn’t anything else to do. He glances back over his shoulder anyway, and finds that, although Soy Latte Vampire is holding his box of dominoes, he’s looking at Tom.

-

“Boys, girls, both, any,” Alex recites, ticking them off on her fingers. “I mean, that’s a bit simplistic and lacking in nuance, but that’s pretty much your options.”

Tom is definitely going to go to Annie and ask if she can organise some of his shifts so he doesn’t have to work with Alex, and her relentless campaign to get him to try dating. Okay, so Annie and the others occasionally try and ask if he’s interested in anyone, can they help, but at least their interest is less… interfering.

“We know Allison likes girls,” Alex continues, “and I like ghosts, and Michaela likes-”

“Regus,” Michaela finishes for her, where she’s by the till scribbling poetry in her notebook. Tom doesn’t know much about poetry, but he’s not sure he likes Michaela’s much, which seems to contain a lot of bones and different words for red.

“Regus,” Alex agrees, because even though Michaela’s boyfriend is a lot older than her in both human and vampire terms, and mostly likes old musty books, the two of them do seem to be really really happy, and that’s nice. Tom appreciates that.

“So what do you think you like, Tom?” Alex finishes.

Tom is honestly just trying to top up their display of muffins right now, and anyway, he doesn’t know. He’s been trying to work it out a little bit, just because one day he’d like to have a person, or a pack, or something like that, and he likes that girls are pretty and often smell nice and have shiny hair, but he’s not always sure that he wants to hold hands with one, or something.

Alex gets distracted serving a couple of werewolves who want mochas and some of the new carrot cake that George really likes but Tom isn’t sure about, and Tom goes to clear a few tables and load the dishwasher, hoping maybe she’ll be distracted. The werewolves smell mated like George and Nina do, easy and happy, and it makes something complicated inside Tom twist slightly. He washes his hands under the tap, and then watches Michaela elaborately writing _throne of bones_ and underlining the words twice, sort of hoping that she doesn’t plan on actually doing that because he thinks Annie would disapprove.

“Okay,” Alex says, “close your eyes.”

Tom sighs, but does what she says.

“Let’s just make this super simple,” Alex tells him. “With your eyes shut, just imagine kissing someone you like. Doesn’t have to be a specific someone. What’re you thinking about?”

Tom does what she asks, both because he’s pretty sure that she won’t stop until he does, and because he’s sort of curious himself. It’s something he thinks about and doesn’t think about, because it makes him feel a bit hopeful and helpless, but he thinks that he would _like_ to have someone someday.

“Well?” Alex asks.

It’s not really a clear picture, not a proper daydream or anything, but Tom thinks and he gets a flash of a tightly-buttoned collar, and long pale fingers, and maybe a fall of dark hair.

His eyes snap open. “I didn’t think of anything,” he says quickly, and goes to wipe tables that are already clean.

-

The next time Soy Latte Vampire comes in, it is also not the right day, and his usual table is taken, and it’s a much busier time than his usual ones. Tom is sort of relieved about this, because it means he has to concentrate on just filling the orders Allison scribbles on post-it notes and sticks to the machine, and can’t think about that thing he is _not thinking about_ because it makes him feel oddly nervous. As it is, he sees Soy Latte Vampire walk in, and spills scalding milk all over his apron.

Luckily, Alex isn’t in, and Adam is too busy trying to do latte art to pay attention to what Tom is doing. Adam is actually not great at latte art, but he keeps insisting that the rush hour after work is a great time to practice. 

“Soy latte?” Allison asks brightly, only the slightest hint of nervousness in her tone, which she doesn’t get around the scary older vampires who look like they’ve just finished picking human remains out of their teeth, but does around customers who are bitchy about the particulars of their coffee.

“…yes,” Soy Latte Vampire says eventually, while Tom bats at his wet apron, and leans around Adam to grab the soy from the fridge. “Please,” he adds, and Allison makes a soft bemused burbling sound. 

“I thought he was supposed to be a dick,” Adam says cheerfully, making no move to keep his voice down, because Adam’s parents loved him but didn’t bring him up to be polite.

Tom decides to say nothing, concentrating on the temperature gauge to make sure he doesn’t overheat the milk, because everything is already confusing enough, and maybe they’re all just hallucinating from being near the coffee machine too long, and what Soy Latte Vampire _actually_ said was _don’t skimp on the foam this time_. Adam just laughs to himself, dashing cinnamon powder haphazardly over two cappuccinos, stepping around Tom to deliver them to the bar.

When he’s got the soy latte as good as it’s going to get, he takes it over to where Soy Latte Vampire is waiting, staring again at the cup sleeves like they’ve done something to personally offend him. He doesn’t look up, so Tom swallows three times awkwardly and then offers: “uh, here.” He scans the cafe and adds: “oh, your table’s not free, I’ll go get them to move.”

“No!” The word bursts out of Soy Latte Vampire’s mouth with apparently no input from his brain; his eyes go wide. “Um, that is to say… I am endeavouring to try new things.”

“Oh,” Tom says, like he understands, which he doesn’t. “Right. Alright then. Enjoy your coffee.”

“I… will,” Soy Latte Vampire replies, back to sounding like a slightly broken robot, and gingerly takes his latte and goes to sit at a table by the wall, but still closer to other people than he normally is. Tom stands for a moment and watches him set his coffee carefully in the top right-hand corner of the table, get out his dominoes, and hold the box for a handful of visible long slow breaths, even though vampires don’t actually need to breathe. Eventually, Adam shouts that Tom needs to get his arse back to work, and Tom startles back into the room where there’s noise and bustle and coffee that needs making, and all of it louder than it was before.

-

Tom gets in on Friday morning to find Mitchell behind the counter, looking harangued and flapping a teatowel at things that don’t need a teatowel flapped at them. He hasn’t tied his hair back like he’s supposed to (he’s actually supposed to wear a hairnet, but that’s been an ongoing fight for a long time and it doesn’t look like he’s going to give in any time soon) and he’s spilled coffee all over his t-shirt. Unlike the rest of the flat upstairs, Mitchell has never really got the hang of helping in the café, tending towards getting stressed and making a mess instead. He can be fun to have around too, because in his darker past, Mitchell was a very sociable vampire, and he knows way more of their regulars than the rest of them do – and which ones they should keep an eye on, because the last thing any of them need is to get caught up with any of the vampires still regularly killing humans. Tom enjoys their reminiscences about who had the more dreadful haircut in the 1930s, or the ridiculous things they got up to in 60s London; it’s not like the vampires he encountered with his dad were ever really in a position to chat.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Mitchell says flatly upon seeing Tom, pulling off his stained apron and chucking it aside. “I need a cigarette,” he adds over his shoulder, disappearing out of the café.

Normally, Annie works Thursday mornings – she leaves a lot of the day-to-day to Tom and Alex now, because when she was first setting this place up she had to work all day every day, and now she wants a rest. Tom wipes up all the milk that Mitchell’s managed to spill everywhere, even in places where there really should not have been milk, and then looks around to see where Annie’s got to. He doubts that Mitchell would have been drafted in unless it was essential, because Mitchell works part-time as a hospital porter, where he doesn’t have to speak to too many people, he has regular access to blood, and his pallid complexion looks a bit less out of place. He probably breaks less cups and stuff there too.

Annie is sitting at the little table by the door, where she’s got her hands wrapped around a mug of tea and is talking animatedly to another ghost, a woman with glossy hair and a pretty blue dress with a big poofy skirt. She also has a cup of tea, although hers is in a proper cup with a saucer. Tom glances around to check that everyone else is happy with whatever coffees Mitchell managed to produce and that they’re all happy abusing the wifi or bickering over who won a particular argument in 1938, and then goes over.

“Can I get you a refill, ladies?” he offers, because Annie has drilled into him that just because ghosts do not eat or drink anything, it doesn’t mean that he can’t be polite. Everyone who comes into the café, as long as they are behaving themselves and the unwritten but official social rules, deserves to be treated politely. It took Tom a little while to get the hang of serving vampires and not immediately wanting to grab for a stake, but ghosts didn’t feature much in his life with his dad, and he’s never had anything against them.

“This is Tom,” Annie tells her friend, who gets a thoughtful expression that Tom can’t read. She makes a _hmmm_ sort of sound, but it’s not entirely a bad one. “This is Pearl,” Annie adds. “She lives above the barber, you know?”

Tom does know the barber, because even though he uses clippers on his own hair so he doesn’t need to go, it’s run by a werewolf, and there aren’t enough businesses around here that are owned by the supernatural for him not to know them all.

“Yeah,” he says, and offers: “it’s nice, I hear.”

Pearl smiles, one that’s tight but not unfriendly, and offers: “the boys keep it tidy.”

Tom nods like he has any idea what that means, and adds: “so… tea?”

Annie nods, handing her mug back to him with a grin and a thanks, but Pearl shakes her head, preferring to run a teaspoon around the rim of her cup. It must be cold by now, but, well, it’s not like anyone’s going to drink it.

Tom knows exactly how Annie likes her tea to look, feel and smell by now, so he gets on with adding hot water to a clean mug and poking the teabag with a teaspoon. He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, not really, but it’s not his fault that he has super werewolf hearing – he overhears all _kinds_ of things in here. 

“I just worry about him,” Pearl is explaining, “you understand.”

“I do,” Annie says, a laugh in her tone. “Mine is a handful.”

“It doesn’t do him good to get _overstimulated_ ,” Pearl adds, a touch of agitation in her tone. “I know you’re handling yours with a comfortable home and friends and a steady job, but, well, mine needs peace and quiet. Routine.”

“I know,” Annie says, in that tone she uses when there’s been shouting and she’s trying to soothe everyone, “I know, but… it’s a coffee shop. We serve coffee, we serve muffins, we try not to let Gilbert make too many music requests, and everyone lives in a state of truce. It’s safe here.”

Pearl sniffs pointedly, and Tom hurriedly removes the teabag and goes to fetch the full-fat milk; in his distraction, he’s nearly let the tea get oversteeped, and Annie will notice immediately.

“If he falls out of his routines, he can get agitated,” Pearl insists. “And from agitated it’s a slippery slope to relapsing.”

“What does Leo think?” Annie asks mildly.

“ _He_ thinks it’s a good thing,” Pearl says, tight. “But Leo’s not the one who’ll be cleaning up the mess afterwards.”

Tom hurries to take Annie’s tea over, so it won’t be as obvious that he’s been listening to them. Annie thanks him distractedly, and he walks back to the counter, grabbing a couple of empty mugs from a cleared table to look busy as he goes.

“He’s referred to him by name,” Pearl hisses. “Hal hasn’t learned anyone’s name in about thirty years!”

Tom hears Annie muffle a snort of laughter, but misses what happens next because Mitchell comes back, smelling of cigarettes and fresh air and at least three cups of strong coffee.

“Why are you helping out today?” Tom asks.

Mitchell rolls his eyes. “Pearl came in all flustered about her vampire, and it was this or babysitting.”

While he adores George and Nina’s child – all of them do, Tom goes upstairs to visit whenever he can – Mitchell has made his stance on babies entirely clear, which is that occasionally he would like a cuddle from Eve, and then he would like to hand her back and let other people deal with her. 

“She has a vampire?” Tom asks, because that seems the most logical question.

“She’s got a cohabitation situation like ours,” Mitchell explains, pressing the button on the filter coffee and jamming a mug underneath it. “Living with a werewolf and a vampire. Of course she’s flustered; her vampire’s a _dick_.”

Tom could say something about most vampires being dicks, in his actually pretty wide experience of both killing them and serving them coffee, but decides not to risk it. “Is he?” he tries.

Mitchell huffs a sigh and grabs his coffee. “Hal’s an Old One,” he says, the capitals falling neatly into place. “He goes through these cycles, either it’s rivers of blood or it’s snappy bitchy OCD, there’s no middle ground, and he’s unbearable both ways.”

Annie and Pearl have stood up and are hugging; three young werewolves come in, all noise and laughter, and Tom doesn’t catch how they say goodbye.

“I didn’t know we got any Old Ones here,” he remarks, because even though he doesn’t kill vampires anymore, there was a time when his dad was very insistent that they had to exterminate as many Old Ones as possible. He thought he’d sense something in their presence; a skin prickle or something, something worse than what he normally gets around vampires.

“Well, you do,” Mitchell says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Coming in to scowl at us all and demand perfect soy lattes.”

“…soy lattes?” Tom echoes, but then Annie rentaghosts over to take the orders from the newly-arrived werewolves, pushing Mitchell fondly but firmly away from the counter, and it’s all lost in him making coffee.

-

It would be really easy for Alex to take the bins out, because she could just grab them and pop outside with them and then back, which means that she likes to make Tom do it. Tom tries glaring at her to see if she’ll change her mind, but she’s too busy leaning over the counter flirting with Sykes, one of their ghost regulars who turns up in his RAF pilot uniform periodically to be charming and beat everyone at chess. There’s no point asking Michaela to do it, because she’ll just flatly refuse; today she’s sketching black ink ravens around what she’s told Tom is “a series of very dark, very understated haikus”.

It’s been a hot afternoon, fading into a hot evening, and Tom drags the first binliner full of wet used coffee grounds and dirty napkins out to the bins out the back. He’s left the neat t-shirt Annie expects him to wear at work in the stockroom, because if he’s going to get covered in old leaky drinks and sweat, he might as well just stick with his normal khaki vest.

Once he’s pushed the lid of the bin open and slung in the first sack, Tom leans back against the wall, letting out a slow breath. The air feels a little too warm, and it’s a few days until the moon; his skin prickles, something warm and sharp on his tongue.

There’s someone standing at the mouth of the alley, hands in his pockets, absolutely still. Tom swallows, convulsive, and isn’t even sure why. Soy Latte Vampire – _Hal_ , Mitchell and Pearl called him – is watching him, eyes steely bright.

“Hi,” Tom tries, and his voice comes out croaky.

“Hello.” Hal looks down at his perfectly shiny shoes, and then back up again. “I wanted to- well, Pearl said that she came here, and I wanted to apologise.”

“For what?” Tom asks. “She just talked to Annie, she didn’t say owt to me.” 

“Ah.” The corners of Hal’s mouth pull; it’s not a smile, it’s not… an anything, but Tom can’t stop looking. Hal takes one hand out of his pocket; he’s holding a white domino, the dots almost worn off, and he turns it over and over in his fingers. “I’ve… been coming here for some time,” he offers, finally.

“You have,” Tom agrees, carefully. “Three times a week, soy latte, no extra foam, just under sixty degrees, spoon on the side.”

“Yes.” Hal’s voice wavers a bit on the word, and Tom doesn’t know what’s happening, but he doesn’t think it’s bad. He’s got a couple of stakes duct-taped to the bottoms of the big industrial bins out here; Annie doesn’t know – though Tom’s pretty sure Mitchell and George do – and it’s not like he wants to use them on customers or anything, but they’ve built a nice little haven here and Tom doesn’t want that messed about with. He could get to at least one of those stakes dead quickly, if he needed to, but he doesn’t think he does.

Tom watches Hal tuck the domino carefully into his pocket, smoothing his jacket meticulously afterwards. He must be hot in that get-up, wearing far too much clothing for the weather, but he doesn’t look it. His adam’s apple bounces in his throat, just above the tight buttons, and Tom isn’t sure when he stopped blinking but he can’t start now.

Hal reaches out one of those shaking pale hands, and every instinct in Tom, as a werewolf and a fighter and a person, tells him to flinch away, get some space and maybe a blade of some kind between them, but he doesn’t move. Time seems to have slowed, and he watches the sweep of Hal’s lashes as he blinks, and wants to say _up until a few days ago I called you Soy Latte Vampire_ and wants to say _I have no idea what we’re doing right now_ and says nothing at all. Hal’s fingertips touch Tom’s bare shoulder, a brush that’s almost not anything at all, but Tom feels it; feels it everywhere, a rush of something that isn’t the usual way a werewolf reacts to a vampire. And then Hal drops his hand and turns, like that was it, that was all of it, and Tom’s reflexes kick in and he grabs Hal’s arm.

Abruptly, too abruptly, Tom remembers the way that Hal carefully, meticulously avoids touching anyone in the café, doesn’t let anyone brush against him, keeps a distance around him. He probably doesn’t like being grabbed, his mind supplies, and Hal is just a little taller than him, enough that to meet his eyes Tom has to tilt his face up. He can feel where Hal’s breath touches his lips, hears the hitch in Hal’s already unsteady breathing when his mouth parts, and he doesn’t know how to make this happen or how to stop it either. All there seems to be is their mingled shaky breathing and Tom’s heartbeat thundering in his ears and Hal’s entire lack of heartbeat creating a space of its own, and Tom’s eyes close entirely of their own accord when Hal’s mouth touches his.

Tom’s never been this close to a vampire he wasn’t killing, hasn’t ever been this close to anyone, actually, because no hug has ever felt like this, ever filled him up like this, and yet the only place Hal is touching him is his mouth, lips parted over his. Tom was never sure about what kissing was going to be like; he remembers asking his dad and getting easily rebuffed, remembers watching films with kissing in them and thinking that it looked weird, not _normal_ , surely, to do that, but it’s alright, actually, when you’re the one doing it. More than alright, really. And when Hal’s tongue touches his, Tom thinks _what_ and then thinks _oh_ and it’s actually _great_ , he gets it now.

They do pull apart eventually, and Tom has no idea how long he’s been gone, and if Alex or Michaela is going to come looking at him, and there’s still a load of bins to take out, and he can’t make himself move, breathless and a little dizzy. Hal blinks twice, slow, lazy, and something crosses his face that Tom can’t read.

“Flowers,” Hal says, softly, and takes a step back. Tom can’t remember when he let go of Hal’s arm exactly, but he’s not holding it now, anyway.

“What?” he asks.

“Flowers,” Hal repeats, and he’s frowning now, and Tom wants him to stop. “I listen, you know,” he adds. “I’m very old and you’re very young and I’ve never been one for picking flowers; I’ve more often crushed them underfoot.”

“ _What_?” Tom demands, but Hal can move surprisingly quickly for a man pretending to be allergic to getting dirty, and by the time he thinks to run after him Hal’s already gone.

-

Annie puts a mug of tea down, careful not to spill a drop. 

“Ta,” Tom says quietly, careful not to move so he doesn’t wake Eve, who is asleep on his chest in a little heap of warm soft baby. He finds Eve soothing; no one is exactly sure if she’s a werewolf or a human or something else entirely, but he’s part of this second family Tom has been building for himself, and he loves her more than he thought he’d ever love anyone who isn’t even a year old yet.

Annie passes a hand over his hair and walks back out of the room, closing the door carefully behind her. Tom can still hear where Nina is standing in the hallway, asking: “how’s he doing?”

“Well, Eve looks comfy,” Annie offers, and Nina makes a soft sympathetic noise.

Tom feels stupid, and small, and confused, and annoyed, and silly for ending up back on the sofa above the coffee shop for a few days, and relieved that they’re happy to have him there. Annie’s been making him endless hot drinks and George and Mitchell sandwiched him between them to watch _The Real Hustle_ , and Nina gave him a really long hug, the kind Tom thinks he might’ve had from a mum, if he’d ever had one. He hasn’t said much, because he doesn’t want to, doesn’t even know how to say it, but it turns out you don’t have to say very much for people to figure things out anyway. It was Alex who found him skulking in the alley by the bins, and she took him straight to Annie, who became determined in a slightly terrifying way that Tom hadn’t seen before.

Hal will have to get his soy lattes from somewhere else from now on.

Tom dozes along with Eve for a while, because it’s nice, just snuggled up here with a baby, and he doesn’t have to think about anything. McNair always made it sound like his first kiss would be a magical thing, something new and special and he’d have to savour it when it came. And Tom thought he had, but it wasn’t what he thought it was, and now he just feels _stupid_. Even Alex hasn’t said anything teasing, while Tom takes to mean he must be in a bad shape, because Alex _loves_ teasing people.

“Oh, c’mon, I’ve been looking for an excuse to beat up Lord Harry for fucking _decades_!” Tom wakes up to the sound of Mitchell’s insistent voice. 

“This isn’t the time to be picking fights with other dry vampires,” Annie reprimands him. “He’s _Hal_ now, Mitchell, whatever else he’s done.”

“He’s a prick,” Mitchell replies firmly. “And he made our weirdly adopted werewolf cry, so.”

Tom doesn’t know if they think he can’t hear them, or if they don’t care. Either way, he shifts awkwardly because he doesn’t know how he feels about this conversation; Eve burbles in her sleep, where she’s dribbling onto Tom’s t-shirt, and he strokes the soft curls of hair on top of her head and presses his cheek against them when she soothes.

“No turf wars,” George announces, equally firm. “You used to be a prick as well, you know.”

“Just as well I reformed,” Mitchell says drily, and laughs.

Tom’s tea has gone cold and Eve will need waking up and probably feeding soon, and he can’t just stay lying here on the sofa sulking for hours, but, just for now, he stays where he is.

-

“At least we can go back to making mediocre soy lattes,” Alex offers. “And now we’ve got oat milk, that can be a fun adventure.”

“I suppose,” Tom replies quietly.

Alex elbows him. “I’m being sarcastic, you moron. No one cares about oat milk.”

Tom’s fine. It’s been a week and he’s still sort of expecting Ha- Soy Latte Vampire to come back in, but he also knows that Annie made at least two phonecalls to Pearl, so he probably won’t. He’s mostly trying to think that at least it was one kiss – he’s got so many other things to experience, when he’s ready, when he wants to. There’ll probably be another customer, or maybe someone else who’s never come into the café, that he’ll like. Everyone else seems to manage it, after all.

It’s a long afternoon, but pretty busy; some days are better than others, but word has got around about the coffee shop, about what it represents, and more and more supernaturals are flocking to them. Annie’s list of rules – which basically boil down to _don’t start any fights on the premises, if you can’t be polite to each other you can’t stay here_ – is printed in big bright letters on a board next to the menu, and although Tom’s heard some of the stories from the early days, when Mitchell spent a lot of time headbutting vampires who refused to drink coffee that George had made them, no one’s needed to be thrown out in the whole time Tom’s been working here. Which is good, because he hasn’t had to fight anyone, but sometimes he sort of misses the simplicity of hunting and killing vampires with his dad, when he knew where he stood.

Adam has been happily drawing penises in the foam on top of people’s lattes; they’re actually pretty good from an artistic perspective, even if Alex can’t keep a straight face as she hands them over to customers and they all know Annie is going to go spare when she finds out this is what’s been happening in her absence. Tom tries to concentrate on taking people’s orders, keeping his writing legible on the post-it notes he passes to Adam, and when there isn’t a queue, he clears the tables. There are plenty of vampires in, sprawled around with expensive electronics and pretentious books, and while Tom’s skin tingles from their presence, all his senses on alert, none of them make him feel like someone’s stroked a light finger down his bare spine. He should probably be grateful, he thinks, his dad definitely wouldn’t approve of snogging vampires.

Tom’s unloading the dishwasher in the kitchen area, and then only finds out that something’s happened when the hubbub of voices from the coffee shop quietens, and Alex says, loud: “oh, _fuck me_.”

He dries his hands on his apron and walks back out into the café. Hal is standing at the counter.

“You’re banned,” Tom tells him, and is pleased that his voice doesn’t crack. “Annie banned you.”

“I know.” Hal looks tired, but his suit is clean and smart, his soft-looking shirt still tightly buttoned. It makes something in Tom twist.

He’s holding a beautiful bunch of flowers, a big one, full of lots of pretty blooms that Tom can’t name because his life hasn’t featured that many flowers in it, all wrapped in bright cellophane.

“These are for you,” Hal adds, shifting slightly from one foot to the other. 

Adam opens his mouth, and Alex claps her hand over it.

“No one’s ever brought me flowers before,” Tom manages. Hal gives them to him, and the cellophane crinkles, the sweet floral mixture of scents filling his nose. It’s nice; someone’s thought about how they’d all go together, Tom can tell.

“They’re an apology,” Hal explains. “For my ungentlemanly behaviour.”

“Are they also a slightly heavy-handed metaphor?” Alex pipes up, from where she and Adam are standing by the coffee machine not even pretending that they’re working. Adam has his phone out, even though Hal can’t be captured on camera, and they all know this.

“I do not require your assistance at this moment, Miss Millar,” Hal says, sharp and firm, and Alex, for once, doesn’t snap back.

“Thanks,” Tom says, shifting the flowers in his arms. “They’re dead nice, Hal.”

Hal smiles, still awkward, and one of his hands darts toward his pocket where Tom suspects there’s at least one domino, but he manages to get it under control. “I am aware that this might not be a welcome suggestion at this moment, but I would also like to take you out for dinner at some point, if you would be amenable.”

Tom blinks, and nearly drops the flowers. Somewhere behind him Alex is hissing _Annie, get down here_ into her phone, but it all sounds like white noise and static, really.

“Like a date?” he asks.

“Exactly like a date,” Hal agrees.

“Oh.” Tom considers it for a moment, and then nods. “I think I’d like that.”

Hal finally smiles a real smile, one that reaches his eyes and crinkles them a little at the corners. “I’m glad to hear it.” He clears his throat a little, shuffles his feet. “Well, I’ve encroached on your afternoon enough, and I know I’m banned from the premises-”

“Aren’t you gonna kiss me?” Tom blurts, because, okay, most of his ideas about romance come from McNair’s hazy teaching and whatever films he’s seen, but in between being upset and cross and embarrassed, he’s also been thinking obsessively about Hal kissing him, the press of his slightly cool lips against Tom’s own. 

Hal’s mouth opens and closes and Alex is definitely whispering _oh my god oh my god oh my god_ into Adam’s shoulder, but he manages: “I wasn’t sure if you would be amenable.”

“I am,” Tom says, probably too fast and too eager, “I am. Amenable. That.”

“In that case.” Hal takes Tom’s flowers, and leans over the counter to hand them to Alex before Tom can protest. “If you could assist, Miss Millar?”

Tom wants to warn Alex not to damage his flowers before he’s had the chance to properly appreciate them, but then Hal is putting a hand under his chin to tip his head up, and kissing him. He’s a little cold to the touch and his lack of heartbeat is very noticeable to Tom’s super-hearing, but Tom likes the way Hal presses into him, the slight scrape of stubble against his face, the tremble in Hal’s fingers where they’re supporting his chin.

Someone starts clapping, and then more and more people in the café start joining in. Tom is all ready to pull away, and maybe shout or make a rude gesture or something, but the moment he even slightly moves Hal makes a soft snarling sound in his throat and drags him closer. Tom should definitely not respond to a vampire making a sound like that by clenching a tentative hand in the pristine material of Hal’s suit, should not open his mouth to Hal’s tongue or allow Hal to have a hand on his shoulder with a thumb against his thundering pulse and his vulnerable throat. But he doesn’t even try to move away, and Hal doesn’t either, and Tom thinks that maybe this might just turn out to be great after all.


End file.
